Princeton Professor Leonard Wantchekon / FT

Portrait of former African activist & Benin political refugee who is now Princeton University professor Leonard Wantchekon at home on New Jersey campus

I was recently commissioned by the Financial Times to shoot a feature on African activist & Benin political refugee who is now a Princeton University Professor Leonard Wantchekon at his New Jersey campus home.

Activist who fled jail in Benin to become a Princeton professor In 1986, Leonard Wantchekon, then a student leader in Benin, west Africa, escaped from Segbana jail after being tortured and held for 18 months for organising university protests against the dictator Mathieu Kérékou. “I escaped and made it across the border to Nigeria, then the Ivory Coast, and a year later to Canada,” says Wantchekon. “I was a political refugee, without a home country.”

Now a professor of politics at Princeton University in the US, he reflects on the long journey he took, from a dank prison cell to one of America’s top universities.